November
18
Independence
Day
Morocco : November 18 1956
Events
November
18
326 – The
old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
401 – The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and
invade northern Italy.
1105 – Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV.
1210 – Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto
IV
1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam
(One Faith).
1307 – William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.
1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks,
flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event
will be known as Sint-Elisabethsvloed.
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known
as Puerto Rico.
1494 – French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy.
1601 – Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire,
utterly defeats Habsburg forces, commanded by Ferdinand the
Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.
1626 – St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
1686 – Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of
France's anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several
peasants.
1730 – Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of
Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.
1803 – The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the
Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment
of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western
Hemisphere.
1809 – In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French
frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.
1863 – King Christian IX of Denmark decides to sign the November
constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark.
This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the
London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.
1865 – Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.
1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute five standard
continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of
local times.
1903 – The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United
States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights
over the Panama Canal Zone.
1904 – General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government
of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup.
1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
1909 – Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after
500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by
order of José Santos Zelaya.
1916 – World War I: First Battle of the Somme – in France, British
Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle
which started on July 1, 1916.
1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his
Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing
dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented
the Nobel Prize".
1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first
fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and
Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters
Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the
Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
1929 – 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: off the south coast of Newfoundland
in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake,
centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph
cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast
communities in the Burin Peninsula.
1930 – Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed
Soka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
and Josei Toda.
1938 – Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first
president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian
Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's
disastrous invasion of Greece.
1940 – New York City's "Mad Bomber" George Metesky
places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by
Consolidated Edison.
1943 – World War II– Battle of Berlin: 440 Royal Air Force planes
bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF
loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
1947 – The Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch,
New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the
history of New Zealand.
1949 – The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners
of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners
are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision
of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000
military advisors to South Vietnam.
1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.
1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for
$155 million USD in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple
cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all,
909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children.
Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples
Temple hours earlier.
1987 – Iran-Contra Affair: the U.S. Congress issues its final
report on the Iran-Contra Affair.
1987 – King's Cross fire: in London, 31 people die in a fire
at the city's busiest underground station, King's Cross St Pancras.
1988 – War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill
into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
1991 – Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican
Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates
to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary
forces.
1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) is ratified by the House of Representatives.
1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution.
1999 – In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured
at Texas A&M University when the 59-foot-tall (18 m) Aggie
Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against
the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors
led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
2003 – In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003,
repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes
effective.
Holidays
and observances
Christian
Feast Day:
Abhai of Hach (Syriac Orthodox Church)
Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul
Juthwara (Roman Catholic Church)
Mabyn (Roman Catholic Church and Anglican communion)
Rose Philippine Duchesne (Roman Catholic Church)
November 5 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Latvia from
Russia in 1918.
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Morocco from
France and Spain in 1956.
National Day (Oman)
The main day of the Feast of the Virgen de Chiquinquirá or Chinita's
Fair (Maracaibo, Venezuela)
For details, contact Datacentre
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